Making light work with modifiers – coming soon

The owner of my London studio handed me a pack of goodies from Lumiquest and Lastolite yesterday to play with as he knows I do a lot of strobist work on location. It’s one of their sample sets and contains a couple of pop-up soft boxes, a pocket bouncer modifier and a snoot.

The flash batteries are charging as I type and I can’t wait to get out in the field to try them out and see what I can do with them.

First impressions are that the soft boxes, the Lumiquest Softbox and the Lastolite Micro Apollo light modifier will be ideal for a lot of the close up work I do where I don’t have the luxury of using the Westcott Apollo softbox, and a naked speedlite is way too hard to be flattering for many of my subjects.

The Lumiquest Promax Snoot is really cool and I have big ideas about what to do with a pencil thin beam of light. No idea if they’ll work or not though but I won’t know until I try. I like using grids on speedlites so it will be interesting to compare the results.

Not overly sure what to do with the Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer yet but I have a little project coming up in a couple of weeks where it might be just the right tool for the job.

Watch this space, I’ll be reviewing each item in a separate post shortly. Need to get some images first though.

The True Cost of a Free Job

DISCLAIMER – I’m going to keep this post anonymous as it is in no way intended to be a dig at anybody but it is based on a true story from a photoshoot I undertook recently. The reason for writing this post is simply to highlight the real costs involved in working for free. I’ve underaken a number of free jobs over the

Very recently I agreed to cover a show in a London theatre as a freebie or nil-paid job. TFP or TFCD as it is sometimes known in the industry. I entered into this fully aware I’d be doing it for free. Why? Because theatre presented a gap in my portfolio. This was a gap I wanted to fill and the experience I would gain from it coupled with the networking opportunities far outweighed any potential loss in revenue. So, why am I writing this post? Well, the primary reason is to highlight what the real cost is of undertaking free work whilst leaving aside any discussion on the loss of revenue. As an interesting comparison I’m going to compare this to my standard wedding package. Continue reading The True Cost of a Free Job »